by Amy Boyles
“Just a coincidence, I think.”
“Maybe it is.” She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders and drifted off back toward her house. “Maybe it isn’t.”
I shivered myself as I rejoined Roan. Strange words she’d said. Almost as if Fannie accused me of the bodies being found. Well, one of them I did help with. But let’s face it, Artie was worthless when it came to anything substantial. Yes, he gave me Brownie’s name, but he couldn’t remember who killed him.
What good was one piece of information when I needed the whole picture?
I stayed at Roan’s that night, drifting into a dreamless and restful sleep. By the time I awoke the next morning, I was ready to track down Brownie and find out if what Kency had said was true or did Brownie know more than what she’d told the police?
Axel and Pepper had stayed at the inn. The four of us sat down to breakfast a few minutes after the regular guests had eaten.
Axel cut into an egg-white omelet and forked a wedge into his mouth. “I have a theory.”
“What’s that?” Roan said.
He pointed to the cellar. “That thing you’ve got trapped is what your spirit is referring to as the master.”
I nearly dropped the spoon of fruit I held. “What?”
“How can that be?” Roan said.
Axel swiped a napkin over his mouth. “Something tempted Blissful to the Jarvis house, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“That spirit mentioned the master.” Axel cut more omelet. “I think whatever is trapped in the cellar thinks you, Blissful, are its number one enemy.”
I shot a confused look to Roan. “But what about him? He’s the demonologist.”
“The thing in the cellar didn’t count on that,” Pepper chimed. “It only focused on Blissful.” She nodded toward Axel. “At least that’s what he thinks.”
Axel steepled his hands in front of his chin. “When I was down there, I sensed an overwhelming need to escape. If that’s what it wants and it has limited ability to communicate with other spirits, at least ones almost as evil as it is, then it could use them to do its bidding. It can’t escape, but it doesn’t need to if another spirit can do its evil work.”
I sank back in my chair on a huge exhale. This was not like anything I’d ever heard before. I gestured toward Roan. “But he comes from a long line of demonologists.”
“He doesn’t know how to use the power,” Axel said. “Yet.”
Roan and Axel exchanged a glance.
“So that thing down there has to be sealed in better.” I dropped my face in my hands. “Can we please have one problem at a time?”
Axel smiled kindly. “The first thing I suggest is opening the canister and seeing if the name Jinkins Hudson works.”
“No,” I protested. “That spirit is too powerful. We give it an opportunity to escape and it will. I know it.” I crossed my arms to heighten my stance. “Absolutely not.”
Axel blew out a breath as he relaxed into the chair. “So then you’ve got another option.”
I hitched a brow. “I know what you’re going to say.”
Roan leaned over me and rapped his knuckles on the table. “Find Brownie. See if she’s hiding something.”
I kissed his cheek. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Axel rose. “In the meantime Roan’s got some work to do.”
He winked at me. “I get to call a real demonologist and see if I can get some help with the beast below.”
Axel stiffened.
Roan extended his hand. “No harm, man.”
Axel relaxed. “None taken.”
Pepper clapped her hands. “What’re we all sitting around here for? Let’s get to work, y’all!”
SEVENTEEN
The police had finished their sweep of the house, and Brownie, along with her family, were moving back in. Go figure. Apparently Kency and her crew had decided they’d discovered all the bodies the home had hidden.
So they’d cleared out, and now the Jarvises had returned.
Pepper and I had dropped Axel off downtown to see if there was any more investigating he could do. Meanwhile I picked up Ruth and Alice, figuring it would be best to approach Brownie with ladies in tow. She seemed like a dainty flower. I didn’t exactly want to bust in and scare her to death.
So I brought the grandmothers with me. Who could resist old women and a tin of cookies? Because Alice never disappointed on that front.
“You got the cookies?” I had one hand on the door handle and the other on my steering wheel.
Alice fumbled in her coat. “I know I put millionaire shortbread in here this morning. Let me make sure it hasn’t fallen out.”
“Millionaire shortbread?” Pepper pivoted in her seat to glance back at Alice. “What’s that?”
“It’s little squares of heaven,” Ruth said. “Goes great with coffee.”
“Hmm.” Pepper snagged her teeth over her lips in thought. “Is there a place in town that sells jelly beans? I’m running low.”
“Running low?” I quirked a brow.
She smiled shyly. “I keep a bag on me most of the time. You never know when a beverage will need a little extra sweetening.”
“There’s a candy store in town,” Alice mumbled. “But they don’t sell millionaire shortbread.”
“Which means it might not be worth your time,” I added.
Pepper whipped off her seat belt. “Thanks. I’ll stop by there.”
“Okay. Is everyone ready?”
When I received three yeses, we evacuated the vehicle and approached the house.
Brownie answered the door after a few knocks. Her hair was pulled into a bun, a fresh coat of lipstick pigmented her lips and her clothes were without one wrinkle.
How anyone could chase after a little kid and still look perfect was beyond me.
“Hi, Brownie.” I did my best to offer an encouraging smile. “We wanted to welcome you back.”
“Oh?” She peered out the door to my band of women. “Thank you.”
“Can we come in? We brought shortbread.”
Brownie stepped away from the door. “Absolutely, y’all. Come on in. Please don’t mind the mess.”
When we were seated with cups of coffee and shortbread, I asked Brownie how the past few days had been.
“Oh, utterly terrible. We had to stay in a hotel and didn’t have half our clothes or toys for Maisie.” Brownie’s head whipped right and left. “Where is that girl? Maisie?”
On cue a little girl walked in, dragging her feet behind her. She wore a corduroy jumper, turtleneck and held a doll in each hand.
“Say hello, Maisie.”
“Hello.” She kept her eyes on the ground. I studied the girl, making sure my initial impression of her wasn’t wrong. After several seconds a halo of light shone around her head.
She was clairvoyant. She shone. It was a telltale sign that a person could see spirits. They literally shone. I flashed the girl an encouraging smile and turned to her mother.
“Have you ever noticed if Maisie has any special talents?”
Brownie finished sipping her coffee. “Like what?”
“Did she ever speak to the spirits here or seem overly afraid?”
“Heavens, no,” Brownie said. She splayed a hand over her chest. “I would never have let my child stay if she was being tortured by spirits. Not that I think that’s possible,” she quickly added. “I want my child to be safe.”
I nodded. The girl may have shared her ability to speak to spirits with her parents and they paid her no attention. It was a familiar tale. Or maybe Maisie had relayed information about a spirit and they told her to stop making up stories. So rather than be scolded, the girl zipped her lips when it came to ghosts.
Wouldn’t be the first time a child had been accused of lying when it came to otherworldly beings. Wouldn’t be the last.
I was looking for a good way to ask Brownie about the Hudsons when Alice blurted out, “Do you think the Hudso
ns killed those people and buried them?”
Brownie shivered. “I hope not. But I tell you, as soon as we can, we’re selling the house and moving. We never should’ve bought it.” She stared up at the ceiling. “In fact, I don’t even know if we’ll stay the night.”
She reached over and clasped my hand. “Thank you for your help. The place feels lighter, somehow. Better. I can’t put my finger on it, but it does.”
“You’re welcome.”
Ruth rolled her eyes. “Enough with all this nice business. The big bad spirit that was in here is trapped. We’ve got him in a can, but he’s still being a big butthole. Or at least has the potential to do so.” She pointed a finger at Brownie. “We know you were related to the Hudsons. We think the big bad was Mr. Hudson, but we can’t be sure. Where’s Mrs. Hudson? We need to talk to her.”
“Way to be subtle, Ruth,” Alice murmured.
I agreed. Thank you for blowing our cover. We were enjoying a nice snack until Ruth opened her mouth.
Brownie went rigid. “I, um. You know what about me exactly?”
I leveled my gaze on her. “Brownie, we know your aunt and uncle were the Hudsons who ran the inn here.”
“Great-aunt and uncle.”
“Okay, great. I stand corrected. We need to know what happened to them. Why they up and left. It’s important. I have several spirits I’ve got to lay to rest.”
Brownie shook her head. “I don’t know what happened to them. I believe Mrs. Hudson is dead.”
Her gaze flickered to the other side of the room.
She was lying. There were certain things I didn’t like to do when I searched for answers. One of which was fib. I didn’t like to fib. I thought it was beneath me. Let’s face it, I was short enough so that if I considered something below my standards, you know it had to be low.
The other thing was that I didn’t like to pull children into the mix. I also thought that was a shady tactic, and I didn’t like shade—throwing it or standing beneath it. At least, not when it was cold outside. Summer, okay. Winter, no thanks.
But it looked like I had no choice.
“Brownie.” I kept my tone even and patient.
“Hmm?” She looked up from sipping her coffee.
“The evil spirit that was here wasn’t the woman. It was something much, much darker.”
“Oh?” Her eyes flared. “How so?”
“The thing attacked me. Said it wanted me dead. It’s still not completely dealt with. Here’s the deal—it threatened your family. The spirit promised to bring death and destruction to all of you.”
Brownie clutched her pearls. Literally. A rope of them twisted around her collar.
“But why? Why would the…spirit do that?”
I licked my lips. “Because it’s evil. Whoever it is, they’re evil. We need to stop it. That’s what we ladies are going to do. But in order for that to happen, I need to know who it was.”
I squeezed her hand. “Can you tell me? Do you know who haunted this house?”
Brownie stared at the floor for a long time. Pepper shot me a sympathetic smile. She reached over and squeezed Brownie’s shoulder.
“I know this can be hard. Sometimes facing stuff that we thought was one way but turns out to be another can hurt.”
“You have to protect your family.” Ruth pointed to Maisie. “You’ve got to protect that little girl.”
“She deserves it.” Alice nudged the tin of shortbread to Brownie. “That little girl is yours to keep safe. If my little girl were still here, I would be doing what I could to keep her secure.”
Alice’s daughter had passed away years ago. She’d been almost grown when she died. I knew it pained Alice not to still have her to hold, even if she would’ve been middle-aged by now.
Brownie scratched her nails over her forehead. “I don’t understand that. I don’t understand at all. We shouldn’t be hurt.”
I slid closer to her. “What do you mean, shouldn’t be?”
Brownie shook her head. “I knew the home was haunted, but I don’t understand this.”
I hesitated but had to ask the next question. “Brownie, we think the spirit might be Jinkins Hudson.”
She worried her hands red. “Jinkins?”
“Do you know anything about him? What he was like? That sort of thing.”
Brownie rose with a flourish of her skirt and paced the room. “He was mean. Cruel. The worst—if you believed my mother. Jinkins Hudson put on a nice face for the guests of the bed-and-breakfast, but underneath it all he was evil.” Her gaze met mine. “Like you say about this spirit.”
“How was he evil?” I had to know, make sure it was really Jinkins in the Spiritus and not some other spirit.
“He would torture his wife. That’s what I heard Deborah would say. He’d lock her in a closet all day if no guests were in the house, and he’d make her wait until he got home before he unlocked the door.”
Ruth shuddered. “That is cruel.”
“That’s why I’m afraid to get on one of those online dating sites,” Alice chirped. “What if I met someone who locked me in a closet?”
Ruth rolled her eyes. “Great excuse.”
“What happened to him?” I pressed Brownie. “When and where did he die?”
She shook her head in frustration. “I don’t know. They simply disappeared, leaving this place. No one could track them down. From what I understand the home went into foreclosure, and now”—she raised her hands as if showing off its splendor—“it’s mine and Wallace’s.”
She sank back onto the couch. “That’s as much as I can tell you. I don’t have any more answers about Jinkins.”
“But he was evil?” Pepper said.
Brownie pinched the bridge of her nose. “To the core, from what I understand.”
Then it appeared we had our man. I shot the ladies a look that suggested we were finished, and rose.
“Thank you for your time, Brownie. You’ve helped us a lot. We should be able to put Jinkins’s spirit at peace. Then the other ghosts should be able to safely depart this place.”
She reached for Maisie, who plopped onto her mother’s lap. Brownie stroked the girl’s soft blonde curls. “Thank you. I never thought we were in trouble. The lady would appear sometimes, but I don’t know. I mean, I guess we were in trouble. All the banging. I just never thought we would be harmed. It was horrible to deal with and needed to be stopped. I never considered it was my own relative doing it.”
I smiled weakly. “Hopefully we’ll be able to put it all to rest soon.”
She scooped Maisie from her lap and rose to follow us. “You know, it’s funny. There’s one other thing about Jinkins.”
Ruth had opened the door, and we stood in the hall. “What’s that?” I said.
Brownie smiled whimsically. “It was rumored that there was a lot of money hidden somewhere in the house. I’ve never found any, but my aunt would say that if there was money, Jinkins would come back from the dead to claim it, you could be sure of that.”
As we walked toward my truck, Pepper slid up beside me. “You think there’s treasure in there?”
I tucked a strand of violet hair behind my ear. “If there is, that might be why Jinkins hung around.” I winked at her. “Maybe we can ask him tonight when we open up the Spiritus and send him to Hades where he belongs.”
EIGHTEEN
We reached Southern Ghost Wranglers a little while later. Stuffed and suffering from a sugar crash thanks to all the shortbread, I plopped down onto a chair and sank into the pleathery texture.
“I’m ready for a nap,” I announced.
“I hear you.” Pepper swept by, her crimson hair trailing behind her. “I could use about twenty winks and then get back to work.”
Ruth sat behind the desk and picked up the phone. “Some of us have work to do scheduling ghost investigations.”
“It’s been a slow week, Ruth.”
“Speak for yourself, Blissful. It’s only been slow for you.
We’ve gotten lots of calls, but since big bad Mr. Hudson is taking all your attention, I’ve been putting them off.”
“How do y’all make money from this?” Pepper said.
“We don’t,” I answered. I closed my eyes for a moment. “I have some savings and Alice sells the booties but we haven’t charged anyone for our services.”
“It doesn’t seem right.” Alice picked up her crochet needle and wound thread around it. “We see people when they’re very vulnerable. You can’t charge them for that.”
“Right,” Ruth chimed. “You can’t walk in and say, ‘It’ll be a hundred dollars per ghost, thank you.’”
“Though plenty would pay it,” Alice said.
“I’m sure they would.” Ruth thumbed toward me. “Only Blissful doesn’t want to charge them.”
I curled my fingers into the armrests. “Listen, this is a dream come true for y’all. When I first met the two of you, all you wanted was to catch ghosts. Now you get to investigate real hauntings. Isn’t that supposed to feed your soul or something?”
“It feeds something,” Ruth said, “mainly my anorexia.”
“You live off a pension,” I shot back. “You have two of them. Two. Social security and your teacher’s union. I don’t want to hear it.”
Ruth rolled her eyes.
Alice hummed something. I pointed a finger at her. “Do you have something you’d like to add?”
“No, I do not,” Alice said.
“Good.”
“Only that if you ever decide we can charge a little, I don’t think fifty dollars is too much to ask for a once-over of a house and to try to coax the evil spirits out. It would at least pay for our rent and utilities.”
I swiveled the chair from side to side. “How about I’ll consider it?”
Alice exchanged a glance with Ruth. “I think that’s a good deal, Ruth. What do you think?”
“No comment.” Ruth returned to listening to the messages.
Pepper laughed. “Oh, y’all remind me of my family back home.”
“They butt into your business, too?” I said.